LUNCH WITH …
MICHAEL CLARK TALKS TO GRAEME LAWRENCE
My customary morning text to Graeme Lawrence on 25 December doesn’t extend ‘merry Christmas’ greetings, but rather a ‘happy birthday’ message. But in 2018, there was an addition: “How would you like to be my guest in a ‘Lunch with …’?”
The response was immediate: “I’d be honoured, Shag. In fact, to make it easier, I’ll come to Auckland and pay for lunch.”
We meet at Harlan Pepper, Graeme’s son’s modern and excellent cafe in Kingsland. The trim 78-year-old is as spritely as ever, despite arthritis ravaging his fingers. The ‘Lola limp’ from the fateful accident in the 1972 New Zealand Grand Prix (GP) could be worse, but it’s a daily reminder of how bad that crash was. When Graeme catches up with fellow F5000 buddies Warwick Brown and Kevin Bartlett, he can see the difficulty they both have walking some 45 years after crashing Lolas and counts himself lucky.
“I’ve been thinking about this lunch, Shag,” he says. “You asked if there was anything I’d like to discuss that hasn’t been written about before, and there is — something I’ve kept to myself for over 50 years that I need to tell you about.”
I’m intrigued, of course, but that’s the thing about Graeme; he’s nothing if not open, and there’s no doubting his honesty with his replies
to my first few questions. “Hopeless” and “useless” are his respective responses to “what were you like at school?” and “what were you like at other sports?”
Graeme was born in Whanganui, although he moved between Hamilton and Whanganui a few times before finally settling back in Hamilton in the late ’60s. It was in that west coast city of Whanganui that his father established a car dealership. His “useless” comment regarding sport was only up until he discovered competitive cycling.
“My best mate Noel got me into it. His son, Gary Anderson, was an Olympic medallist, and Noel and I are friends to this day,” he tells me.
A Citroën among the Harvards
Father Doug took the Lawrence family to a car race at the Ohakea Air Force Base and, although the exact date can’t be recalled, Graeme is crystal clear as to how the events played out: “Mum laid out the picnic lunch and the four boys were waiting to tuck in when Dad said, ‘I’ll be back in a minute or two’ — so, we’re watching a saloon car race with the Light 15 Citroën in it that we’d driven over from Whanganui in.”
I wonder aloud if Graeme’s dad, Doug, was a trained mechanic.
“No, but he was intuitive,” he says. “A bit like Kenny’s [Smith] dad, Morrie — but to start with, we really knew nothing.”
By 1956, the Lawrence family racer was a twodoor short-wheelbase Light 15 convertible.
“It had no fenders, no lights.”
By this time, Graeme was working for his father: “At 14 and a half, I decided to leave school [Wanganui Technical College]. The dealership had expanded to include Fiat, Peugeot, and Mercedes-benz, and I worked in spare parts to start with, trying to learn as much as possible. I was still cycling at that stage but once I got the feel for speed in a car, it became obvious what I wanted to do.”
Transition
Doug, meanwhile, was getting serious, acquiring a written-off Triumph TR2 that was fitted with a Mistral body, and then purpose-built racing cars: a ‘Bobtail’ Cooper. Like his future ‘blood brother’, Ken Smith, Graeme was proving a dab hand as a car painter. “We painted that Cooper ‘Braeburn Green’” — followed by a Lola sports car.
Graeme’s debut was in the Cooper, which he raced at both Ohakea and Levin. Then a letter arrived advising him that he couldn’t compete as an amateur cyclist if he was receiving prize money from motor racing.
“That was the final straw. Besides, Mum had bought me a book on Stirling Moss and I was hooked. By then, I’d driven the Lola and just
wanted to get my hands on an open-wheeler,” he says.
Graeme had transitioned from spare parts to the showroom where his gift of the gab was honed. In his spare time, he became a driving instructor. “I was all of 17, but I had too many frights, so I soon gave that away.”
A dry period followed until he bought an Anglia in partnership with his brother, Tony. In 1964, after a season sharing the Anglia, an opportunity presented itself to Graeme to buy a year-old Brabham.
“Bruce Harre was a friend from Whanganui — in fact, he taught me to change gear without using the clutch — and he was working for Bruce Wilson in Hunterville [Wilson was a sub-dealer],” Graeme recalls. “Of course, they’d both been instrumental in Chris’ [Amon] early career. Bruce Harre had gone to England to work for Bruce Mclaren, and through him we bought the Brabham. It had no engine. A pushrod was $650 and a twin-cam was $825; I couldn’t afford either but somehow — don’t ask me how — we got a brand-new twin-cam.”
The car was sent to Wellington instead of Auckland, meaning that Graeme missed the 1965 GP, so his open-wheeler debut was at Levin.
“All the cars were in this big shed, and, in addition to Bruce [Mclaren], Jim Clark and Graham Hill were in the field,” he tells me. “I was conscious of all these big names as I prepared to leave the pits for the first time. I remembered something from that Stirling Moss book: that ‘new drivers in a single-seater either wheelspin or stall’. I managed to do neither.”
Budget racing starts to pay
Graeme reflects on how few spares they had: “We had nothing, basically, and then Atlantic Petroleum came along and gave me a badge for my overalls, some stickers, and all the race fuel we could use. We thought we were made.”
That Brabham, a BT6, proved to be an ideal car to learn in. Graeme was the third 1500cc car home at Levin, fourth overall at Dunedin, and fifth at Waimate. He joined Team Molyslip for the 1965–66 season, and looks back with fondness at what was his first big win. “That was a turning point down at Ruapuna. It was November and both Roly [Levis] and Bill Caldwell had identical BT6S, so it was a good test for me. Roly and Bill were in front to start with, but I worked away. I just had a feeling that my driving had moved up a notch and that this was my day, and it was!”
A week later, Graeme was second at Levin to Roly, who was the benchmark in the 1500cc National Formula cars. There were late-season wins at Pukekohe and Levin, but the wily old Putaruru panel beater easily won the championship, with Graeme second equal.
Trading up
A new car was needed, and another Brabham was the obvious choice.
“Brother Tony was in Europe working on the Lotus Formula 3 team. He assembled all the bits for a BT18, and it arrived here in late 1966. I painted it pale blue with a dark blue nose and stripe. It looked fantastic,” he says.
I’m reminded at this point of the exceptional preparation of all the Lawrence cars, and Graeme instantly returns to Whanganui in the early 1950s: “Dad ran taxis, and, on Saturdays they’d be used as wedding cars. He’d finish his last taxi run, then get the car home and, while he got changed, Mum and the four boys would start cleaning. We all got stuck in, and that’s where the fanatical detailing comes from.”
Unbeknown to the others, Roly had also imported a BT18 for the 1966–67 National Formula Championship, and, once again, the old master prevailed.
At the end of 1967, the Lawrences returned to Hamilton as Graeme started what would be his best summer to date. He earnt a point for finishing sixth in the GP, won a round of the Gold Star [the Timaru trophy], and clinched the National Formula Championship with
55 points, 17 clear of runner-up David Oxton.
The great OE
The Brabham was sold as Graeme contemplated his next move.
“Jimmy Palmer had won the Gold Star in a Formula 2 Mclaren, the M4A. It was a beautifully made and good-looking car, so I phoned Bruce and asked him whether they planned on making any more of them,” Graeme says. “To my surprise he said, ‘Believe it or not, we’ve been talking about you; how would you like to come over to Europe? We’d provide the car, spares, and tow vehicle, but you’d have to bring a mechanic and supply an engine’.
“Well I didn’t have to think too long to say yes. I had no idea how we were going to pay for an FVA, but all the way through I kept asking myself, ‘How bad do you want to do it and what sacrifices are you prepared to make?’ Looking back, it seems that most of the time, I had no idea how I was going to pay for things.”
Not always as it seems
At that time, the standard engine in Formula 2 was the jewel-like and mellifluous fourcylinder 1.6-litre Cosworth FVA [for ‘four valve’, at a time when such an arrangement was considered cutting edge], producing some 160–165kw. Graeme’s mechanic was Hamiltonian Dave Mcmillan, who himself would go on to forge a fine driving career, including winning the New Zealand GP in 1981 and the North American Formula Atlantic championship in 1982.
“Dave and I arrived in England around mid to late February, and immediately started building the car. It was at this time that I learnt how to aluminium weld. We got an ex–jimmy Clark FVA, but, even before the first race, there were changes happening in the background. Bruce explained that they were overcommitted with the Formula 1 and Can-am programmes and that they’d have to pass me onto another team. An arrangement was made with Chequered Flag, who were already running an M4A for Robin Widdows. I understood the situation and why they had pass me down the chain,” remembers Graeme.
Spain — the stuff of dreams
The first race was at Montjuïc Park near Barcelona on the last day of March.
“I travelled in the transporter with the mechanics — not the sort of thing Widdows would ever have done,” Graeme says. “Honestly, I only got to start because Derek Bell was a non-starter. I was amazed at how much the other guys abused their cars. Jumping kerbs was something we couldn’t risk in case we broke something, but not these jokers. I especially remember [Jean-pierre] Beltoise going past me, flicking off kerbs. I wondered if I was out of my depth; it’s not as if I was overawed at being on the same grid as big names — we’d done plenty of that in New Zealand — but this was something else.”
Graeme was an early retirement with a gearbox issue, but does recall one positive about his European debut: “Our cars came out onto the grid country by country, so Chris [Amon] and I went out together, the main difference being that, after [the cars] were pushed out, his headed to the front of the grid and mine went to the back row. Incidentally, Chris’ Ferrari was chassis number 0008 — the car he would win the 1969 Tasman in, and the car I won it in the following year. If someone had told me as the cars were pushed out that in 18 months that car would be in my garage, I’d have said, ‘don’t talk crap’.”
Germany — a bit of a nightmare
A week later, they were at Hockenheim for what was the official opening round of the European Formula 2 Championship — and sadly Jim Clark’s last race. Don’t believe anyone who says, or writes, that the great Scottish driver was killed in a meaningless race. Firstly, how could any race with one of the best there’s ever been in it be considered ‘meaningless’? Secondly, fellow world champions Graham Hill and John Surtees were also entered.
Graeme recalls: “I had breakfast with Jimmy the morning of the race. It was already raining; an awful day that just got worse.”
It was a two-heat affair, each of 20 laps. Graeme was 14th in the first heat but was out with overheating early in the second.
Frustration
At Thruxton in southern England in midapril, Graeme finished 13th, but there wasn’t much to cheer about. At this time, in addition to Mclaren, chassis options included Matra, Brabham, Lotus, Chevron, Merlyn, Lola, and Tecno — all designed around the FVA — while Ferrari’s 1.6 was a V6. It was apparent that the M4A had shortcomings.
“I talked to Bruce and he admitted it was undeveloped. Guy Ligier and Jo Schlesser also had Mclarens and, although I didn’t speak French, they spoke enough English to share their frustrations. We became friends through adversity.”
The circus moved on to the tricky little round-the-houses circuit at Pau in southwestern France, of which Graeme says, “I just clicked with that place, and started to believe that perhaps I’d cracked it.”
Fading dreams
Next stop was Jarama near Madrid at the end of April.
“That was a disaster. My race gear was stolen, and I had to borrow a helmet and race suit. Anyway, I didn’t qualify; Bruce kept saying, ‘Look, if you take a wheel off, don’t worry — just get into it.’ But I knew Graham Warner [the owner of Chequered Flag] wanted me out and kept implying there were issues with money. After the race at Zolder [Belgium on 5 May], Bruce called me into his office and said that Warner wanted to put Frank Gardner into the car for the next race at Crystal Palace. I was being kicked out of the team because I wasn’t delivering.
“All these years on, I totally understand Bruce’s position. At the time, and for a while afterwards, there were all sorts of conflicting stories. I’ve just kept quiet about it because in part I was embarrassed at not having had the maturity to handle it better, but mainly because I didn’t want to appear as if I was whining about how it turned out,” he says.
So that was it: a dream opportunity that turned into a nightmare in less than two months.
“I went to Crystal Palace to watch Frank because I needed to see if it was me or the car. He called me over at one point and said, ‘how the hell did you drive this thing?’ — except he didn’t say ‘hell’. The fact that Frank’s results in the car were much what I’d done was a little consolation, but I was pretty down at that point. Then came another meeting with Bruce, who gave me a real good talking to — nicely of course, because it was Bruce, but he told me in no uncertain terms that I had to believe in myself; that was a life-changing moment. He made arrangements for another M4A that I could take back to New Zealand for the 1968–’69 season. It was a very friendly deal, and I had no other options at the time.”
In part two, Graeme tells us of the pain of painting his Mclaren, buying the Ferrari, and going F5000 racing. Plus, there’s his successes in south-east Asia and the first person to phone and congratulate him when he won the Tasman Cup.